GTA Vice City Stories is a great portable open world game
Vice City Stories is set before Vice City on the PS2 and follows Vic Vance just after he joined the army to raise money for his brothers illness. But the story starts to get dirty right away as he helps his commanding officer Martinez in drug dealing and killing gang members. Its weird though because Vic Vance doesn't want to commit these acts but ends up doing them anyway. Some characters from the original Vice City appear in this game including Lance Vance, Phil Cassidy and Ricardo Diaz and play their part in the story well.
The gameplay in Vice City Stories is different from the console games and apart from the odd awkward moment (like performing a drive-by) the controls work quite well. Now the core gameplay involves driving or running but you can also fly planes and helicopters, ride bikes and drive boats. The missions involve using these types of vehicles to complete drug deals, eliminate gang members and other usually illegal tasks. Shooting is still pretty awkward because you can lock on to and enemy and fire then change targets to shoot another enemy or you can manual aim but the crosshair moves to slow. You also can't move while you are shooting so getting out the way to reload is a hassle.
There is alot to do in VCS whether it is completing the main story missions to building an empire by taking over businesses held by other gang members. There are 30 businesses on the map and you can take over one by killing all the gang members guarding it then buying it and choosing what business to have whether it be loan sharking, protection racketeering, prostitution then drugs, smuggling and robbery later on in the game. It is an interesting system and you can do missions for each of the different types of business. When you get your reputation up for each of these you earn more money each day. By owning all businesses and completing all the missions you will never run out of money to spend on weapons and other stuff.
So even though Vice City Stories doesn't move the series forward at all I don't think that's what Rockstar where trying to achieve with this game. Instead they made the best open world game on a portable system ever and one that can be enjoyed by anyone.
The gameplay in Vice City Stories is different from the console games and apart from the odd awkward moment (like performing a drive-by) the controls work quite well. Now the core gameplay involves driving or running but you can also fly planes and helicopters, ride bikes and drive boats. The missions involve using these types of vehicles to complete drug deals, eliminate gang members and other usually illegal tasks. Shooting is still pretty awkward because you can lock on to and enemy and fire then change targets to shoot another enemy or you can manual aim but the crosshair moves to slow. You also can't move while you are shooting so getting out the way to reload is a hassle.
There is alot to do in VCS whether it is completing the main story missions to building an empire by taking over businesses held by other gang members. There are 30 businesses on the map and you can take over one by killing all the gang members guarding it then buying it and choosing what business to have whether it be loan sharking, protection racketeering, prostitution then drugs, smuggling and robbery later on in the game. It is an interesting system and you can do missions for each of the different types of business. When you get your reputation up for each of these you earn more money each day. By owning all businesses and completing all the missions you will never run out of money to spend on weapons and other stuff.
So even though Vice City Stories doesn't move the series forward at all I don't think that's what Rockstar where trying to achieve with this game. Instead they made the best open world game on a portable system ever and one that can be enjoyed by anyone.
